- Secondly, I DM'ed OD&D for the first time yesterday, and both the players and I really enjoyed it. Our experience seems for bolster the theory that the less rules there are, the more "realistic" and "immersive" the experience is, and it seemed really conductive to creating an emergent adventure story.

- We used the Empire of the Petal Throne beginning/background skills system and I think it may be one of my favorite skill systems and certainly my favorite for D&D-ish systems. When I was young vague skill systems frustrated me into nerdrage; nowadays I could care less for having defined mechanics for basket weaving.

A couple times in Red Box Vancouver games, the question of skill knowledge has come up. Each time, I've figured that if the PC has skills, the player should make an ability check (d20 roll-under whichever stat), and if not, half the stat, round down.

Then I ask the player if his character has skills, and the player always says something like "no, my character is a scoundrel adventurer with no education."

But if we had a skill system, damn would they get pissed if they took all the wrong skills!

The two word verifications I just got were Scuric and Flecone, a pair of dastardly Italianate adventurers and ne'er-do-wells. They are planning on looting an abandoned temple that goes by the name of [insert your verification word here].

@Dave R. and @knobgobbler: The URL you want is http://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2010/08/give-me-reasonor-hundred.html (which links to Blackrazor's table at MediaFire: http://www.mediafire.com/?34ma1t3pr66r33s).